Beginners (Raymond Carver)

First of all, dear readers, I must apologise for the lack of posts recently. Although I finished re-reading Raymond Carver's 'Beginners' over the Atlantic Ocean on the way home from Chicago at the end of October, I simply have not found the time to write about it. Ok, obligatory blogger's apology done with. Now, to business!

This is a very special book to me for a number of reasons. I first read it in October 2009 on a train home from Birmingham, having bought it from Borders in the Bull Ring, after I had visited a very dear friend of mine for the first time in an age. The seventeen stories contained in the volume held me, obsessed me, and inspired me to change my own prose style. Revisiting it two years later seemed a no brainer.

Moreover, the story behind this book is a fascinating one. When Carver submitted these stories to his editor and mentor Gordon Lish in 1980, they were cut down to the "linguistic bone" and became Carver's most famous collection 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'. Some of the original drafts were cut by as much as 78% for publication. Character names were changed. Titles were changed. Tess Gallagher, Carver's partner, who had loved the original stories, was horrified at the changes. Carver dedicated 'What We Talk About...' to Gallagher and promised one day to republish the original stories. As of Carver's death in 1988, this had not happened, and so Gallagher put her trust in William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll to restore the text. This process took twenty years, with the text finally being published in September 2009.

Having read 'What We Talk About...' many years ago, I was struck by how much richer and more human the extended versions of the stories are. From the first story 'Why Don't You Dance?', I preferred the 'Beginners' versions to the 'What We Talk About...' versions. In these restored narratives, Carver has the space to develop the motivations of his characters, the breadth to run the gamut of emotions. There is a wisdom and a profound sense of dignity about 'Beginners' that I think 'What We Talk About...' lacks. It isn't that the stories in 'Beginners' are of a completely different style- he was naturally a writer with an instinctive sense of economy- but they are less extreme in the staccato sentence structures and more assiduous about letting the reader know who these people are.

The themes presented by Carver include divorce, alcoholism, death and relationships. It is interesting that many of the concerns of America in the late 1970s and early 1980s are represented so frequently, with characters attending analysis and Alcoholics Anonymous. There is a sense of middle America and its fears, the way security can be ripped away in a moment. Several of the best stories are extremely dark and sombre in tone. In 'Tell The Women We're Going' a pair of men who grew up too quickly turn an afternnon of pool and drinking into one of rape and murder. 'So Much Water, So Close To Home' concerns the discovery of a body and the suspicions and rifts this creates in a small community. One of the very best stories, 'A Small, Good Thing' tells the story of parents who unexpectedly lose their son in protracted circumstances against the backdrop of menacing phonecalls from the baker who made their son's uncollected birthday cake. The ending to this one, however, is markedly more humane, heartwarming even.

Elsewhere, 'Gazebo' is an extended dissertation on alcoholics in relationships with each other, the title story 'Beginners' contains a masterful and extended dialogue section from which Lish first found the "what we talk about, when we talk about love" line, and 'Where Is Everyone?' is a first person narrative from the perspective of an alcoholic divorcee who hates his ungrateful children and takes refuge with his mother. All of these stories are incredibly subtle and moving, masterfully paced and beautifully written. Only a couple fail to satisfy: 'Pie' doesn't seem to go anywhere and 'Distance' seems to drag a little.

I found this to be a deeply satisfying re-read. The stories were certainly as good as I remembered them being, and it certainly helped pass the time on a long and tedious plane journey, just as it had originally helped pass the time on a long train journey...at any rate, this book comes highly recommended, particularly if you are a fan of Carver and his spare style...I'm convinced that if you read this, you'll see that his original uncut stories are in fact better, and that Gordon Lish did readers a disservice with his swingeing cuts of 30 years ago.